I have read with some amusement the attacks on Richard Spencer and his present project, which over the past few days have multiplied on the internet like microbes in a culture. I note that Spencer’s enemies share two salient characteristics: a religious belief in human equality and a Borg-like collective consciousness: they have all articulated identical criticisms (e.g., Spencer and other Alternative Right writers do not mind discussing the existence and consequences of human biodiversity) and two of these critics, exasperated by the absence of tattoos on Spencer’s visage, have faithfully reproduced what strikes me as an obviously apocryphal story. As is often the case with attacks from mainstream quarters, they reveal more about the nature of the attacker than about the target. In evidence are obtuse, conformist minds that take pride in their willful ignorance; slow, dull brains of negligible cubicage and low neural density; mean-spirited souls whose likely response times in IQ tests would need to be measured in geological eras.

What is ironic whenever these politically correct ninnies scream about ‘racism’ is that in doing so they lay bare the illogical and contradictory nature of their position. If one is a champion of diversity, one celebrates the evidence of its existence. Yet, these anti-racist nupsons who so vehemently and ridiculously object to our analyses declare themselves champions of diversity only to then wail in horror and undo themselves in invective, whining, and vituperation each time evidence of diversity is acknowledged in oral or written communication. To my mind, this is indicative of hypocrisy: the aforementioned anti-racists claim to be one thing, but are, in fact, quite another. Beneath their fine, universalist rhetoric and celebrations of multicuturalism lurks a totalitarian heart, yearning for total homogeneity: their ideal world is a grim ball of mud, where all humans look the same, think the same, speak the same, and earn the same, in conformity to the Left’s delirious visions of universal equality – a brave new world of gray cities and cement office blocks, filled with polyester carpets, neon lights, Formica surfaces, and rows upon rows of identical cubicles. Does not equality necessitate homogeneity? Does not diversity necessitate heterogeneity? Is not the former predicated of sameness and the latter on difference? If so, then, why is human biodiversity such a problem?

Thanks to Ron Unz for his thoughtful (and prompt!) response to my critique. He said a handful of things that I would like to explore further, perhaps in a post at the Enterprise Blog. Here I want to correct a small but important error made originally by Ed Rubenstein and repeated by Unz in his response to me. In an otherwise insightful article, Rubenstein said:

"The Census lumps the prison population into a larger category -- people living in 'Group quarters'. But this category includes people in college dorms, nursing homes, and military bases."

This is not true. The Census has a subcategory within "group quarters" called institutionalization. Institutionalization includes only people in correctional facilities, mental hospitals, and nursing homes. It does not include anyone in college dorms or military bases, which are both part of a different subcategory. The point is important because I used institutionalization as a proxy for incarceration in my response to Unz, and he criticized my analysis by citing Rubenstein's inaccurate claim.

Of course, institutionalization is not a perfect measure of incarceration, but it's significantly better than as portrayed by Rubenstein and Unz. As I wrote in a footnote to my article:

"Given the pre-retirement age range I use, nursing homes should not be skewing the data. And if Hispanics disproportionately end up in mental hospitals, then frankly that's something we would want to know about anyway."

I grew up in Manhattan in the 1940s and early 1950s, and save a scattering of Puerto Ricans, few Hispanics were to be found. Then, after almost four decades of being a Midwesterner, I returned to Manhattan in 2004. I immediately saw Mexicans, El Salvadorians, and similar Spanish-speaking immigrant workers everywhere. Spanish was the lingua franca in restaurants, nursing homes, building maintenance, and construction, among others. Employed blacks were visible, too, but as far as I could tell, nearly all were recent immigrants from the Caribbean. Outside of occasional retail clerks (almost entirely female) and messengers, the native black working population had, despite contrary census data, seemingly vanished, at least as far as I could observe first hand. Even once historic “black jobs” like cleaning lady and nanny seemingly now lacked a substantial native-born black presence.

What explains this employment transformation and, critically, where have all these blacks gone?